Purpose

To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The many reasons millennials are shunning cars

There's a lot of evidence that millennials don't drive as much — or
care as much for cars in general — as previous generations their own age
did. They're less likely to get driver's licenses. They tend to take
fewer car trips, and when they do, those trips are shorter. They're also
more likely than older generations to get around by alternative means:
by foot, by bike, or by transit.

There's still a lot of dispute,
however, over exactly what these trends mean. Are millennial driving
habits a byproduct of the weak economy? (If you have no job to go to,
chances are you drive less.) Or do they signal deep and permanent shifts
in the American relationship to automobiles? If the latter is true,
these nascent millennial indicators could have major implications not
just for car dealers and gas stations, but for how the U.S. invests in
transportation.

We probably won't know the answer with certainty for at least several years. But researchers at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Frontier Group,
who have been tracking these trends, argue that the case is growing
stronger for a major and lasting change in how today's youngest would-be
drivers — and those to follow them — use cars. In a new report (an update to an earlier survey two years ago), they argue that this also means it's time to rethink how we subsidize, encourage and invest in car use.

As
for the millennials themselves, Tony Dutzik, Jeff Inglis and Phineas
Baxandall write, "they have the most to gain or lose from the
transportation investment decisions we make today, as they will be
affected by those investments for decades to come."

Their report
defines millennials as born between 1983-2000, the youngest of which are
just on the verge of their first driver's licenses (should they choose
to get them). The case for durable changes in their behavior — beyond
the recession — is three-fold.

The economic argument

It's
true that the recession has probably dampened car use, not just for
millennials but for everyone. But there are also some relevant,
long-term socioeonomic shifts underway that will likely continue to
affect car use even after the economy fully recovers. As student loan
debts rise, alongside the cost of housing in many big cities, budgets
for car payments will be squeezed. This is particularly true in cities
like Washington, D.C., where the high cost of housing is partly
subsidized by the low cost of transportation for young professionals who
rely on transit and bikes instead of cars.

Americans
are also forming their own households, getting married and having
children later — all trends that predate the recession and that postpone
life stages associated with the peak driving years. Of course, this
means that as millennials age, as they move into their own homes and
have their own children, they'll likely start to drive more. But these
long-term demographic shifts also suggest that future twenty-somethings
may continue to drive less than baby boomers, for example, did at that
age.
Add to this research that shows that millennials are driving
less than previous generations did at this stage of life, even when
accounting for the state of the economy or for household income.

And
one more economic argument: Americans just reaching driving age today
"have no living memory of consistently cheap gasoline," the PIRG and
Frontier Group authors write. And they're not likely to see it again in
the near future, regardless of what the economy does:

U.S. PIRG

The technology argument

Many of the economic arguments address whether millennials can afford to drive, which is a different question from asking whether they want
to. This second strand of technological arguments suggests that maybe
they simply chose not to, precisely because they now have more and
better alternatives.
One popular argument is that young people no
longer have to get in a car to visit friends because they can meet up
online. These results from a Zipcar survey suggest, not surprisingly,
that millennial and 34-44-year-olds are a lot more likely to say they do
this:

This
isn't the most compelling technological argument, though. More
importantly, technology has made it possible to travel by car without
owning (or driving) one, by fueling the advent of car-sharing schemes
like Zipcar and car2go, or taxi-like "rideshare" platforms like Uber and
Lyft. Most of the data on driving patterns doesn't capture these newer
activities very well. So it's possible that part of the millennial
decline in miles traveled or trips taken by car fails to account for the
growth of trips taken in cars that belong to someone else.

But
technology has also enhanced other alternatives to the car. It's made
bikeshare systems possible and transit more appealing (through real-time
arrival apps). Smartphones and WiFi have also increased the relative
costs of driving. You can now read your email on the train, starting
your workday during your commute. But you can't (or at least you
shouldn't) do that from behind the wheel of a car.

There's every
reason to think the influence of this technology on transportation will
only grow, regardless of what happens next with the economy.

The housing preferences of millennials — which are equally up for debate
— are also closely tied to their transportation patterns. If, in fact,
they chose cities over suburbs, apartment living over detached homes,
and "walkable" places over drivable ones, those preferences would translate into less car use as well.

U.S. PIRG, Pew Research Center

Whatever
millennials do right now, it's highly likely that they'll drive more as
they age into their 30s and 40s. The question is whether they'll
continue to drive less than their parents did at each stage of life —
and whether future generations will replicate their patterns.